'Jack of Clubs,' Laurel said, with confidence. Liana smiled as she turned the card to prove her right. It had taken barely a day for her to learn how to peer into someone's eyes and read their thoughts. It was quite unfortunate, then, that she had only a devil for company, whose thoughts were dark and twisted. Liana really only thought about scaring and hurting people. From time to time, the red-skinned woman had other desires but they were brief fixations that rarely last more than a few minutes.

  'What am I thinking, now?' The devil said, with a grin.

  'You're glad that our training has come to an end because you're hungry. You spotted a farmhand a few miles east, you liked the look of him and you want to scare him, at first by startling him, then by threatening him but you haven't decided whether or not you want to torture him.' Laurel now regretted the more intimate moments she'd shared with her companion.

  'Correct,' Liana said. 'I think I'll be off now. Go practice your mind-reading skills, or don't. Get some dinner, though. You seem famished.' With that, the winged devil flew off, headed to her victim. Laurel tried to chase away the foreign thoughts that now plagued her. Liana had been right about how hungry she was, so she tried to focus on that. She'd not really intuited that exercising her telepathy would exhaust her, since picking up on emotions never had. Eventually, she decided to do something about it and went off to the nearest large settlement.

  Laurel began by practicing her gifts on the guards on the walls. Some had rather lewd thoughts, whereas others had more pleasant dispositions. The most notable encounter she had, however, was with a guard who reminisced about a brutal murder he'd committed. She pushed him off the battlements and drank in his terror as he plunged to his death. Next, she infiltrated the magistrate's estate. There, she learned many secrets that would've interested her earlier in her life. Only one of them now piqued her curiosity, however. A powerful lord, with a daughter about to reach marriageable age, had begun spreading a rumour that the Queen had long been having an affair and that her children were bastards.

  It was unlikely to be true, of course, but a lot of people wanted it to be, since it would remove Callum from the line of succession. With Laurel an enemy of the state, and also a suspected bastard besides, as much as that pained her, the King would be left with no direct heir and would be in need of a new wife. The idea of her step-mother, disgraced and divorced on account of the same kind of lies she'd spread about her own mother, brought a dark smile to Laurel's face. She did realise, however, that the loss of royal status would put her poor half-brother in considerable danger and a wave of protective instinct washed over her, souring her smile. Unwilling to sort through her conflicting emotions, she decided to move on from the world of courtly gossip.

  In the back alleys and slums, she found a few murderers and otherwise violent criminals to drink from. With one particularly monstrous individual, she drew out his death by replicating his own method. Striking his head, over and over again, against a wall, as he'd done to a poor young man whose father had fallen behind on rent. It took some skill not to simply shatter his skull with the first hit. The messy kill had been witnessed by quite a few people, none of who tried to intervene, but Laurel caught only the slightest hint of fear. Most of them were relieved, rather than scared. By the end of the night, she'd killed a dozen people and terrified as many more. She returned to her camp sated and satisfied but avoided reading Liana's mind, on account of the awful grin she flashed her.

  'Nice night?'

  'Yes,' Laurel confessed, after a pause. 'Thank you for teaching me, truly,' she began.

  'But?' Liana continued her sentence, before journeying through her eyes. 'You want to release me from my servitude?' She seemed offended. 'Do you really think that's a good idea? I did save your life, remember?'

  'I am grateful for that, as well. I just want to be alone.'

  'No,' Liana snarled, 'you're still looking for someone to replace your precious Sarah. I can do that, you know?' In an instant, she transformed herself. Laurel reflexively looked away but Sarah's voice brought her back. 'Please, Laurel, I don't want to lose you again.'

  An unwelcome tear slithered down Laurel's cheek. 'Stop,' she pleaded, 'please, stop.'

  Instead, Liana crossed the distance and brushed her cheeks with Sarah's soft hands. 'I don't want to leave you,' she said, and Laurel had to look. The details of her face were so perfect, even her eyes. She didn't know how the devil had managed to make her seem so real when Laurel had no memories to share of Sarah at her current age but she didn't care. They kissed and spent the next few hours in each other's arms. All of Laurel's concerns and troubles melted away and Liana knew exactly how to lock her down. She shifted back to her true form and went to leave, forcing Laurel to beg for her to stay.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  'Please, I just need a little more time with her.' She was disgusted with herself but, all the same, hopelessly addicted to the illusion and a sense of belonging that she knew she'd never be able to replicate. Day after day, Sarah returned and Liana pushed. By the time winter had set in, Laurel had begun inviting the devil to join her for dinner. Mostly, Liana just found it amusing.

  'You work so hard to justify your killing,' Liana said, as they stood in the wreckage of a luxury cabin that would've been covered in blood if she'd not been so thorough in her drinking, 'it's cute.' Five bodies, mangled and contorted, had been propped up on the settee by the fireplace. In life, they'd been the perfect image of wealthy and respectable gentlemen to all but their victims. In death, their hideousness would be undeniable to all who looked upon them. 'You know it would've tasted just as good if they were innocent, right?'

  'Of course I know that. Why does it matter to you?'

  Liana shrugged her shoulders and said nothing but Laurel read her mind. The devil wanted her to fully embrace her inner nightmare, to let go of even the slightest pretence of morality.

  'Why?!'

  Liana flashed her a challenging look. 'It's in my nature. It's what I am. I'm a temptress, a seducer, a nightmare that brings out the worst in people,' she said, making a grasping notion with her hand and pulling it in, as if to demonstrate the process. 'The tiny little bits of humanity in your soul let you deny what you really are but that's not possible for me.'

  'It is,' Laurel insisted, 'there are tales of nightmares who switch sides, who try to help rather than harm.'

  Liana rolled her eyes at that, 'have you ever actually met one?'

  'No,' she admitted, prompting the devil to smile, 'but it must be possible.' Laurel dearly hoped that was true.

  Liana's smile twisted into a frown, 'absurd,' she spat. 'I'll make things simpler from now on. The next time you want to see Sarah, you have to kill an innocent person of my choosing.'

  Laurel lunged at the devil, the moment the ultimatum left her lips, grabbing her throat and pinning her to the ground. 'You're my slave. You do what I want, when I want!'

  The devil smiled at that and croaked out, 'you sound so much like your master.'

  Laurel recoiled at that and pulled herself up. 'Leave,' she said, on the verge of tears, 'I release you.' She hoped her words had power, and repeated them before Liana could object. 'I release you. You're free. Leave me now or I'll kill you.'

  The devil smiled at that, wickedly. 'You don't know where the real Sarah is, do you? I do. How else do you think I knew how to mimic her so well?' Before Laurel could process the implication, Liana drew a grasping hand across her body, causing the fireplace to explode. The fire struck Laurel hard and the devil used the momentary distraction to fly off, high into the sky.

  Laurel focused her mind on dispelling the initial burning sensation and went off after her. Liana had the advantage of distance but she had speed and reach on her side. As they weaved through the moonlight, Laurel reached out with her blood and wrapped a barbed whip around the devil's neck, yanking hard and sending her plummeting through the trees. She followed her down to the forest floor and immediately sensed the presence of many other powerful nightmares hastily brought under Liana's command. They assailed her, tearing and slashing and nipping at her form, which she had to shed. The devil tried using the chaos of the brawl to get away but Laurel transformed herself into a bed of blood, stretching across the forest floor with thousands of tendrils and killing everything in her wake.

  'Please,' Liana cried in Sarah's voice, 'don't hurt me!' She took on Sarah's form, too, as Laurel dug into her with dozens of needle-like tendrils. She screamed and screamed as Laurel pushed to overcome her own telekinetic might and drain her blood. She raged, a psychic scream that echoed for miles, as the process dragged on. Sarah's form was a sobbing, pleading, mess and Laurel wanted to stop. The worst part was that it was the nightmare that kept her going, desperate to keep gorging on devil's blood. When it was finally done, and the illusion broke, Laurel transformed herself back into her true body and cried over Liana's desiccated corpse. She let the wailing and weeping hurt her throat and didn't stop until she was on the verge of passing out.

  Her pain and grief brought dozens more nightmares, who drank it all in and fattened up. She couldn't bring herself to slay any of them or do much else but grieve. 'I'm sorry,' she said, at least a hundred times, as she cremated the devil in a pyre. She lingered there long after the fire had died out, for many days. Apart from swotting a few fairies that got too close, she did nothing other than dwell on her regrets. She was driven from these memories only by the approach of dream hunters, drawn into the forest either by the ruined cabin and the evidence of her handiwork within, by the large number of overfed nightmares, or both. She remembered, bitterly, that Liana had been the only thing between her and certain death the last time she'd faced a hunter.

  She was in the trees by the time they came across her camp. The moon beasts came first. Then, inevitably, she heard familiar voices. John's group had come and she watched them, silent and still as a statue, as they rooted through her meagre possessions. 'You can feel it in the air, can't you?' John asked, to which Gordon grunted the affirmative. 'If she's even left, it couldn't be more than a few hours ago.' Each of the hunters carried a crossbow and she could smell the demon's blood on the tips of the bolts. Once again, she assumed that her fearlessness was failing her.

  It took a good long while before she came to a decision about what to do. Her human instincts presented her with the choice only to fight or to flee but the nightmare in her blood gave her a third option. So, she resolved to follow. She would stalk them, learn their thoughts and their routines, watch them chase their own tails and gorge herself on their darkest dreams.